A sign at sunset in the Congress center ahead of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 19. Photo: AFP/ Fabrice Cofferini

Climate change at top of Davos meet’s list of issues

Observers fear annual World Economic Forum will serve only to expose again the differences between East/West, US/EU and business/activists

BySTUART WILLIAMS | ALEX PIGMAN

Global decision-makers gather in Davos starting Tuesday for their annual meeting, with challenges facing the planet – from climate change to conflict in the Middle East – as imposing as the Alps that surround the Swiss resort.

Observers fear the annual World Economic Forum will serve only to again expose the differences between East and West, the US and the EU, and business and activists in combating the most burning threats at the start of the third decade of the twenty-first century.

But organizers of the event, which goes back almost half a century to 1971 – when the world was without mobile phones, climate change was not a concern and nations wee locked in the Cold War – seek to tackle the issues with a long list of guests from all sides.

US President Donald Trump will likely hog much of the limelight, but also present for the second straight year will be Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, whose famously hard stare at the American leader at the UN General Assembly symbolised anger over inaction on global warming.

Another issue set to darken the snowy Davos horizon is the risk of conflict between the United States and Iran, as tensions spike following the US killing of a top Iranian commander and Iran’s subsequent accidental downing of a Ukrainian airliner.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, however, cancelled his planned participation at the four-day forum, removing any chance of a showdown – or even a meeting – with Trump.

‘No firm foundation’

With Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng leading a top-level delegation from Beijing, the trade dispute between China and the US will also be at the center of attention, even after this week’s signing of a deal that marked a truce after two years of tensions.

The key European figures present will be EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who may only serve to highlight the extent of differences between Europe and the United States on key issues.

“On climate change and on many global conflicts – such as the US conflict with Iran – US and European leaders disagree not just on the solution but also on the very nature of the problem,” Jeremy Shapiro, research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, told AFP.

He said that while EU leaders see climate change as an “existential challenge,” Trump considers it a “Chinese hoax.”

The two sides are also at loggerheads over the Iran nuclear deal from 2015 that was supposed to defuse the risk of conflict with Tehran.

“None of this is a firm foundation on which to build common solutions to vexing global problems,” Shapiro said.

‘Fog of uncertainty’

In its global risk report issued ahead of Davos, the World Economic Forum singled out popular discontent over a lack of economic stability, climate change, unequal access to the internet and healthcare systems under stress as the key challenges for humanity.

With the fires that have ravaged Australia attracting global attention, it said “climate change is striking harder and more rapidly than many expected,” with temperatures on track to increase by at least three degrees towards the end of the century.

And global health systems risk being “unfit for purpose” as non-communicable diseases –such as cardiovascular diseases and mental illness – replace infectious diseases as the leading causes of death.

Another threat is the growing distrust of vaccines as well as the increasing resistance of many germs to antibiotics and other drugs.

“The world cannot wait for the fog of geopolitical and geo-economic uncertainty to lift,” the report said.

“Opting to ride out the current period in the hope that the global system will ‘snap back’ runs the risk of missing crucial windows to address pressing challenges,” it said.

Trump’s appearance at Davos from January 21-22, his second after speaking there in 2018, will coincide with the start of his landmark impeachment trial at the Senate on January 21.

“I expect him to send a message to the American people and not to the international community,” Carlos Pascual, a former US diplomat and now a vice president at IHS Markit, told AFP.

“The purpose of that message is to reinforce with the elector in the United States that his number one concern in international policy is ‘America first’.”

Origins

The World Economic Forum in Davos is a can’t-miss stop for the global elite, but who would have guessed that its origins go back to the European revolutions of the 19th century?

From the color of the access badges to the writer Thomas Mann, here are five things to know about the once-a-year business blowout.

What is ‘Davos’?

Davos is shorthand for the World Economic Forum, which was founded in 1971 by German business professor Klaus Schwab as a way for European corporate leaders to learn from their US peers.

Political leaders started attending later in the 1970s, and since then it has morphed into an annual jamboree where the global elite – joined by intellectuals, activists, celebrities and sometimes protestors – sit on panels and debate the world’s problems.

White card privileges

Dressed in business suits and hiking boots, attendees converge on the Congress Center, a concrete bunker about half-way down the town’s Promenade, where access is strictly limited with the area fenced off and patrolled by highly armed police.

Life in the Congress Center is ruled by the color of your badge (except for actual ministers and leaders who cruise the halls badgeless). In Davos you are white, orange, purple or green.

White badges open all doors and are generally given out to corporate executives, government officials and media leaders.

Holders of white badges can attend the hundreds of sessions, lunches, dinners and night-caps, as long as they sign up through a dedicated app beforehand. White badge life is strictly off the record.

Most journalists operate with the orange badge, which offers limited access to the Congress Center and surrounding hotels. Still, reporters get unparalleled proximity to the world’s most powerful with the orange badge but are blocked entry to VIP rooms and special meeting areas.

Purple badges are for technical workers, while green badges go to the entourage of top officials.

Night life

Davos has a reputation for being one crazy party, despite the ponderous themes on the official program.

The fun takes hold in swanky chalets, many of them former sanitoriums, that line the promenade with the more exclusive addresses discreetly tucked behind pine trees higher up the hill.

Corporations and emerging nations wanting influence host dinners and cocktail parties that can go on into the small hours of the morning.

In 2018, San Francisco cloud company Salesforce held a Hawaii luau and lined up 90s rockers The Killers as entertainment. Google parties were the hottest ticket a decade ago, but have since become more studious affairs.

Many events take place at the Belvedere, a hotel whose halls become a lobbying labyrinth of corporate suites, cocktail parties and secret dinners, where executives, public servants and leading journalists exchange bon mots and business cards.

Revolution to sanitorium

Davos first became a resort destination in the 19th century thanks to a German asylum-seeker who crossed into Switzerland to evade an anti-radical clampdown by German authorities in the wake of the 1848 revolution.

A refugee, Alexander Spengler was offered a job as a country doctor in this lost Alpine valley and soon noticed that local farmers could clamber up mountains and toil land without losing breath or breaking a sweat.

From that, Spengler would launch a health care revolution, turning Davos into a Belle Epoque place-to-be where well-heeled Europeans took the long road from Zurich to treat tuberculosis and other long diseases, which killed thousands of every year.

Magic Mountain

One visitor to the rarified air was Katia Mann, wife of Death in Venice author Thomas Mann. She spent months sitting on the spa terraces bundled up in blankets, receiving treatment.

Thomas Mann used the experience to write The Magic Mountain, his allegory of Europe’s pre-Great War society, published in 1924 and considered to be one of the greatest works of world literature.

Hans Castorp, the hero of the novel, heads to Davos to visit a sick cousin but gets entangled in sanatorium life and its motley cast of characters, staying on the mountain for seven years before throwing himself tragically into fighting in the trenches of the First World War.

– AFP

ORUMTRUMP TO DAVOS

JANUARY 19, 2020

An activist wearing a Donald Trump mask holds a placard as he takes part in a gathering in Landcourt on December 19 called by climate activists prior to the start of a march to Davos ahead of the World Economic Forum.
Photo: AFP / Fabrice Coffrini

World Economic Forum: Trump’s impeachment hideout

President will chill with tycoons, foreign leaders at Swiss resort Davos while trial gets underway

BySEBASTIAN SMITH, WASHINGTON

Far from feeling the heat, President Donald Trump will be chilling in Davos, a fancy Swiss ski resort, when the Senate hears opening arguments in his impeachment trial this week.

Trump is so confident that his Republican party majority will stay loyal that he sees no risk in jetting to Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum on Tuesday, right as lawmakers convene for the historic trial.

“I’m going to be going to Davos. I’ll be meeting the biggest business leaders in the world, getting them to come here. I’ll also be meeting with foreign leaders,” Trump told reporters at the White House as his trial formally began on Thursday.

The contrast in settings will be extreme.

In Washington, Democratic lawmakers will argue that Trump is a corrupt leader who abused his power by trying to strong-arm Ukraine into a fake investigation aimed at tarnishing a top election rival, Joe Biden. They’ll call for his removal from office.

More than 4,200 miles (nearly 6,800 km) away, Trump will swagger through Davos as the forum’s unquestioned star.

Davos is where the world’s movers and shakers gather each year for informal discussions on weighty issues. Detractors call it a talking shop for out-of-touch billionaires and celebrities, and this year most major international leaders are staying away.

The field will be clear for Trump to do what he does best – tout his achievements and suck up the attention.

“We are booming,” he said. “There’s nothing even close.”

“Every world leader sees me and says ‘What have you done? This is the most incredible thing that we’ve ever seen.'”

Although the 2020 Davos theme is climate emergency, complete with an appearance by teenage activist Greta Thunberg, Trump has little belief in global warming.

He’ll push his own agenda.

He’ll “take on the perils of socialism,” top advisor Kellyanne Conway told reporters Thursday.

“He’ll continue to talk about the stock market, getting NATO members to pay up to provide for the common security, and also talk about the global economy.”

Republican loyalty

Not so long ago, Trump might have been more nervous about leaving his fate in the hands of Republican lawmakers.

The upstart businessman shocked the Republican establishment when he sought the 2016 nomination.

Mitt Romney, the unsuccessful Republican nominee from 2012, dismissed the real estate tycoon and TV show performer as having “a character and temperament unfit for the leader of the free world.”

Another senator, Mark Kirk, branded candidate Trump a “malignant clown.”

What a difference three years in the White House make.

Today Trump is the undisputed king of the Republican Party.

Moderate old timers in the mold of Romney or the Bush political dynasty are marginalized. Fiercely partisan, fiercely loyal Trump acolytes are the norm.

Behind the scenes, Republican lawmakers sometimes express distaste for the president’s style or frustration at his policies, but in public they march in lockstep – and no one more so than Senate leader Mitch McConnell.

Whatever McConnell and the rest of the party think privately, polls indicating watertight Republican voter support for Trump give them no margin for maneuver in the impeachment trial – unless they want to risk losing their own jobs.

The country at large is split evenly on whether Trump should be thrown out of office, but under 10 percent of Republicans want that to happen.

There’s little doubt that McConnell, the iron leader of the 100-seat upper chamber, will be able to keep his majority of 53 in line for Trump.

“What he wants, he’s going to get,” Conway said. “To be acquitted and exonerated and not convicted, not removed from office – and re-elected.”

– AFP

US aid scheme sparks debate in Sri Lanka

The MCC is seen as an instrument of the “new imperialism” pursuing “economic hegemony through the extension and ever-deepening penetration of neoliberal capitalism.”

By ASOKA BANDARAGE

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is a US government entity established by Congress in November 2002 (then referred to as the Millennium Challenge Account). It is a component of the George W Bush administration’s US National Security Strategy introduced after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, linking economic development with defense and diplomacy. The MCC states its mission as “reducing poverty through growth” and chooses countries to receive funding based on MCC criteria on economic freedom, good governance, and social investment. Eligible countries must apply to the MCC with specific proposals showing their “ownership” of the compacts they propose.

However, critics claim that there is little deviation of country proposals from the MCC “blueprint”: “every single country independently identified agribusiness, rural entrepreneurial development, and transport infrastructure as their key priorities.” They argue that the MCC’s primary commitment is not to poverty reduction but to “reshape the legal, institutional, infrastructural and financial contexts of poorer countries to better suit US economic interests.” Thus the MCC is seen as an instrument of the “new imperialism” pursuing “economic hegemony through the extension and ever-deepening penetration of neoliberal capitalism.”

Sri Lanka compact

Sri Lanka was selected to develop an MCC compact in December 2016 and the MCC board approved a five-year Compact for Sri Lanka on April 25, 2019. A November 2017 “Constraints Analysis” completed by the Center for International Development at Harvard University for the compact identified policy uncertainty; poor transportation and inadequate access to land, especially “the difficulty of the private sector in accessing state-owned land for commercial purposes” as the major constraints to ‘private investment and entrepreneurship” in Sri Lanka. According to the Harvard Constraints Analysis:

“Access to land is a binding constraint to growth and economic transformation as well. The state reportedly owns approximately 80% of the land in the country and it is held by multiple ministries. Government coordination is poor and the process of acquiring rights to develop land is slow and unclear, resulting in an inability of the government to meet the demand for land needed for new private-sector investment, including for export-oriented FDI [foreign direct investment]…. Problems with land use and titling are prevalent throughout the country and affect manufacturing, agriculture, construction, residential and commercial development, and tourism. Restrictions on land parcel size, the absence of land titles, and long-standing laws affecting rural land use all reduce agricultural productivity and rural well-being.”

The MCC Compact would offer US$480 million to Sri Lanka to undertake transportation and land management. Article 1 of the draft compact states the objective of the Transport Project as to “facilitate the flow of passengers and goods between the central region of the country and ports and markets’ and the objective of The Land Project as to ‘increase the availability of information on private land and under-utilized State Lands in order to increase land market activity.'”

MCC funding is to be used to change Sri Lanka’s land policy through the creation of a state land inventory based on a “Parcel Fabric Map,” the conversion of paper deeds into electronic titles and a “computerized mass appraisal system” for land valuation. MCC funding would support “the creation of a digital folio for each land parcel that includes the legal records on land transactions and a linkage to spatial data that identifies the location of each land parcel where possible.” The goal is to speed up land privatization and commoditization giving easy digital access to investors including foreign corporations.

According to the draft agreement between the MCC and Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Finance, MCC funding would be used to provide titles to state-owned land held by individuals, mostly smallholder farmers, thereby facilitating the sale of their lands to any buyer.

“Conversion of state lands to the private domain, creating a marketable and bankable title to this land in the name of the land holder. The Government shall register the absolute land grants in the title registration system, allowing the use of land as collateral for loans and the free transfer of this land without excessive government restrictions. The Land Special Provisions Act (LSPA) is expected to define the process the Government shall use for this conversion of land rights. The availability of MCC Funding for this Activity is dependent on the enactment of the LSPA.”

Colonial land expropriation

The MCC compact brings to mind the early stage of capitalist development in Sri Lanka when the British colonial state introduced legislation, infrastructure and other measures to establish the plantation economy. Those measures opened up the hitherto isolated Kandyan Highlands, bringing a fundamental social and economic transformation that benefited the colonizers and a small stratum of local entrepreneurs and administrators. The infamous “Ordinance No 12 of 1840: to Prevent Encroachments upon Crown Lands” was introduced to provide the juridical and administrative framework to expropriate land from local people who had customary rights but could not prove ‘ownership’ and titles to their land as required by the British.

As noted by this author in Colonialism in Sri Lanka, Appendix 4, the ordinance stated: “Whereas divers persons, without any probable claim or pretense of title, have taken possession of lands in this Colony belonging to Her Majesty, and it is necessary that provision be made for the prevention of such encroachments.”

Another controversial ordinance, No 1 of 1897, the so-called “Waste Lands Ordinance,” overlooked traditional sustainable cultivation practice of letting land in fallow to maintain the natural productivity. Seeking commoditization and calling uncultivated lands “waste land,” the ordinance introduced a policy that “any land or lands … in respect of which no claim is made … be deemed the property of the Crown and may be dealt with on account of the Crown” (The Legislative Enactments of Ceylon, Vol II, AD 1889-1909).

British colonial policymakers and their latter-day apologists have argued that colonial policies helped advance peasant proprietorship by giving land titles to peasants that previously lacked them. However, as demonstrated in this author’s book Colonialism in Sri Lanka, the long-term results were great confusion and conflict over land rights, large-scale dispossession from ancestral land and impoverishment of the Kandyan peasantry. Subsistence agriculture and local self-sufficiency were undermined and the natural environment was disrupted.

Now, US and Sri Lankan proponents of the MCC agreement are claiming that the distribution of 1 million deeds granting outright ownership to individuals holding state land under the Compact is a poverty-alleviation measure. Moreover, the draft agreement states, without any elaboration, that its Land Project “is unlikely to have adverse environmental and social impacts.”

However, MONLAR (Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform), the National Joint Committee and many other Sri Lankan and diaspora organizations see a set-up for a massive modern-day land grab, displacement and peasant pauperization: “large multinational companies have made small time farmers bankrupt and are buying off their agricultural land…. By giving desperate people an asset that they can sell, the government has ensured that these lands will be sold off.”

Under the MCC compact, there are plans to hand over the task of drawing land survey maps and creating the streamlined digital database of 3.6 million parcels of state owned land to Trimble Inc, a US-based geological information and mapping firm, for a period of 15 years. Survey Department trade unions have gone on strike opposing this move which they see as a threat to their employment, national security and a wasteful expenditure. Again, these plans bring to mind the early stage of colonial plantation development when a single British “planter-official class” determined rules on land ownership, surveyed and accessed land from the colonial state, employed cheap labor and developed highly profitable plantation companies producing exports for the global market.

The Sri Lanka Physical Plan (2018-2050) and a projected Physical Spatial Structure Map for 2050 upon which the compact is based have also raised alarm. There is concern that the proposed “economic corridor” and highway from Trincomalee to Colombo, reported to cover more than 485,000 hectares, could “splinter” Sri Lanka into two separate entities. Given the relationship of the MCC to the US National Security Strategy, there is fear that the compact could facilitate greater US control undermining Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.

In response to persistent public demands for transparency, a draft of the MCC agreement was at last published on the website of the Sri Lankan Ministry of Finance last November 5, just 11 days before presidential elections. It reveals a range of questionable clauses that severely impinge on the rights of Sri Lankan people and the independence of the country. Only a few of the clauses can be mentioned here.

According to Annex 1, after the compact’s signing, a new company called MCA-Sri Lanka is to be established (under the Sri Lanka Companies Act of 2007) as the Sri Lankan government’s “primary agent responsible for exercising the Government’s right and obligations to oversee, manage, and implement the Program and Projects.” In other words, the democratically elected Sri Lankan government is asked to voluntarily abdicate its powers and responsibilities to a yet-to-be created private company thereby contravening its constitutional mandate to protect the country’s sovereignty, territory, security and the well-being of its people.

Section 6.4 states that the compact will be governed by international law and Section 6.8 states that the “MCC and the United States Government or any current or former officer or employee of MCC or the United States Government shall be immune from the jurisdiction of all courts and tribunals of Sri Lanka for any claim or loss arising out of activities or omissions under this Compact.” This affirms that the compact and all its activities will be above the Sri Lankan law and Sri Lankan citizens would not be able to seek legal assistance from their country’s judicial system. Moreover, Sri Lanka could be taken to international court if it backs out of the compact or contravenes any of its clauses.

Section 3.9 states that ‘The [Sri Lankan] Government grants to MCC a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid, assignable right and license to practice or have practiced on its behalf … any portion or portions of Intellectual Property as MCC sees fit in any medium, now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose whatsoever.” Does this mean that the MCC can claim intellectual-property rights over any information or intellectual goods that Sri Lankans create in any area where the MCC Compact operates?
Article 5.1 states that either party may terminate the compact without cause by giving 30 days’ notice, but it specifies that only the MCC can terminate the compact and withdraw funding in whole or in part when it wants.

Section 5.4 states, “If the Government fails to pay any amount under this Compact or the Program Implementation Agreement when due … the Government shall pay interest on such past due amount.” This contradicts the statement made by the US ambassador to Sri Lanka that the $480 million is a “A gift, not a loan … from the people of the United States.”

Article 7.3 requires the compact “to be submitted to and enacted by the Parliament of Sri Lanka,” which would mean that once the compact became law, it would be exceedingly difficult to make changes to land and other polices it introduced.

Struggle over the compact

The struggle over the MCC compact brings to mind the long history of popular resistance against colonial land policies in Sri Lanka. The rebellion of 1848, for example, was a nationalist revolt against policies, such as, the Ordinance of 1840 which helped expropriate peasant lands to develop the plantation economy. Today, Sri Lankan activist groups, such as, the National Joint Committee and Sri Lanka Diaspora groups are demanding that the Sri Lankan government withdraw from the MCC Compact. They are encouraged by the decision taken by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court on the State Land Special Provisions Act (LSPA) in July 2019 referring the Act to the Provincial Councils, as it would impact passage of land provisions envisaged in the MCC Compact.

Anticipating the electoral defeat of the US-backed Sri Lankan government and in a hurry to seal the MCC Compact, the US Embassy in Sri Lanka issued a statement last November 6 stating that “the United States anticipates working toward grant signing and parliamentary approval with the Government of Sri Lanka after November 16, 2019.” Also on November 6, the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) filed a Fundamental Rights petition seeking to stay all approvals and decisions in respect of the MCC Compact as well as the ACSA (Acquisition and Cross Services Agreement) and SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) military pacts with the United States. The petitioners state that if signed or executed, the MCC Compact would violate the fundamental tenet of sovereignty of the country, which the constitution expressly upholds to be “free, sovereign and independent.”

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s former defense secretary who led the armed victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, was elected as the president of Sri Lanka on November 16, 2019. His massive victory was a response to growing concern over national security and widespread opposition to external interventions represented by the MCC Compact, ACSA, SOFA and other measures undertaken by the previous US-backed Sri Lankan government.

President Rajapaksa promised to discard the MCC compact during his election campaign. However, upon coming into office and under pressure from the US to sign it, his government has appointed a cabinet subcommittee to study the Compact and has informed the Sri Lankan Supreme Court that the MCC Compact would “be revisited and reviewed.” Meanwhile the charges of nationalist forces that the MCC Pact is a tool of “new imperialism” and “neoliberal capitalism” and the demand to discard the pact, are escalating.

Asia Times is not responsible for the opinions, facts or any media content presented by contributors. In case of abuse, click here to report.

ASOKA BANDARAGE

Asoka Bandarage PhD is the author of Sustainability and Well-Being, The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka, Women, Population and Global Crisis, Colonialism in Sri Lanka and many other publications. She serves on the boards of the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate and Critical Asian Studies and has taught at Yale, Brandeis, Mount Holyoke, Georgetown, American and other universities.

India’s Muslim women are breaking free

...a remarkable feature of the protests is the fact that they are largely being led by women.

By NAJMUL HODA

Since December 2019, India has seen countrywide protests against a new citizenship law. The law fast tracks Indian citizenship applications from non-Muslim citizens of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The federal government has stated that this is to help “persecuted minorities” in these countries. Those opposed to it call it discriminatory and in violation of Article 14 of India’s Constitution.

But a remarkable feature of the protests is the fact that they are largely being led by women. There is a debate around whether religious symbols should be a part of what are secular protests. Some argue that since Muslims are the targets of such a law, they must assert their identity.

In this context, a quotation recently attributed to Hannah Arendt has been doing the rounds. She says that the Jews should have resisted persecution as Jews, not as Germans insofar as the reason for their oppression was religious, not national. It requires some audacity to express an opinion, however tentative or nuanced, that is different from the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, who drew her insights from the lived experience of a persecuted minority.

The fundamental question of who constitutes a minority needs to be answered in order to make sense of the befuddling complexity at hand. There are myriad definitions, and a slide into reductionism must be avoided at all costs. But, in the context of a nation, members of a minority community do not constitute the upper echelons of the ruling class. They are not disenfranchised. But their group claim is not the same as the majority’s. Its members, having all the civic and constitutional rights, may reach supreme heights as individual citizens so long as they don’t predicate their claim on group rights, and earn universal acceptance by not flaunting their identity.

The fundamental question of who constitutes a minority needs to be answered in order to make sense of the befuddling complexity at hand

A minority’s main identity is national, within which it exists as a subset with some historically inherited features which set it apart for the rest, and which need to be protected, preserved and promoted. The majority has no quarrel with these differences, rather the majority rejoices in them as a form of exotica.

It is in this framework that we may try to understand the significance of the relative presence and absence of religious idioms and symbolism in the agitations which have been raging for over a month now.

Breaking free of the clergy

The most salient features have been:

The complete redundancy of the clergy. The ulema (clergy) are nowhere to be seen. Two main reasons can be ascribed to their conspicuous absence. First, this being a non-theological, legal and constitutional issue, they don’t have enough understanding of it to make religious pronouncements. The subject remains outside the purview of the Halal-Haraam (pure-impure) binary and sectarian squabbling. Further, irrespective of the outcome, they might have reckoned that their control over the community, through the imposition of what is pure and impure, would remain intact. They are going to be disappointed. This agitation is as much their obituary as it heralds the birth of a non-theological and secular consciousness of Indian Muslims.

Secondly, the vanguard role played by women. This is their moment. This is their movement. Although, apparently, it is against government’s policies, its social consequences are going to be far reaching. It is a result of slow but steady modernization of the Indian Muslim society. The inescapable pull of modernity has been very deftly accommodated by the emerging religious-ideological discourses.

The popularity of the veil-less burqa and the headscarf named hijab, which without challenging the religious dogma on the subject of veiling the face, exposed it nonetheless. It used the subterfuge of adding a couple of folds of cloth around the head and neck in lieu of covering the face. It has been a great enabler. It enabled women to venture out for education, employment and daily chores; and brought about a silent, pervasive and irreversible change.

That these women, as a collective, are in the lead, has irredeemably dented the Indian Muslim patriarchy. This may be the first time that they have dominated the public space in such a resounding manner. It is not only going to formalize the already modified gender equation within the family, but also to institutionalize new standards of propriety by displacing the Purdah prudery which kept in place a women-phobic discourse of piety and propriety.

The credit, of course, goes to the government for freeing the Muslim women from the clutches of the ulema and the talaq (divorce)-on-my-lips tyranny of their men. Had the government not felt so deeply about the oppression under which Muslim women had been groaning, and had it not taken revolutionary measures on the triple talaq issue, they would never be so emboldened and empowered as to script an altogether new sociology and theology for themselves.

Apart from how this movement is undermining Muslim patriarchy, and freeing Muslim consciousness from clerical domination, its impact for their political mainstreaming is even more significant.

This is the first time that the idiom of their public discourse has been largely secular. The green flag and the Allahu Akbar slogans are not even conspicuous by their absence. They became obsolete, and no one is missing them. No one is talking about Islam being in danger. The issue is not about whether they can practice their religion. And, with ulema being left out of this, the bogey of Islam-in-danger can not be raised.

This may largely be a Muslim agitation, but they are agitating not as Muslims but as Indians. The song Tera Mera Rishta Kya (What is your relationship with me) was raised by those for whom this is pure but the iconography of Bharat Mata (Mother India) and the song Vande Mataram (Hail Mother India) are impure. Therefore, despite the fact that old habits die hard, recidivist impulse of separatism and insularity has been marginalized, not tactically but sincerely, in good faith and with true conviction.

This is also the first time that the Indian flag has been so ubiquitous in a public demonstration, and the arguments of agitation have been so firmly anchored in the Constitution. The Indian Muslim has come of age as a citizen. She is talking as an Indian. She is mainstream. She is not a minority. Not anymore.

China’s warning to the ‘zombie’ generation Smartphone culture

CHINASMARTPHONE ADDICTION

JANUARY 20, 2020

Smartphone culture has taken on a whole new meaning in China. Photo: AFP / Johannes Eisele

China’s warning to the ‘zombie’ generation

Smartphone culture takes its toll on the social media in-crowd as the market continues to expand

ByGORDON WATTS

In the 1960s cult classic Night of the Living Dead, a zombie army staggers around in the darkness like mummified corpses.

Fast forward more than 50 years, and a similar sight can be seen in broad daylight every day of the week as the iGeneration stalk the planet.

From the metro system in Beijing to the Bakerloo Line in London, you will see gangs of social media addicts glued to their smartphones. Constantly searching for their next fix, these trivia junkies appear oblivious to the world around them.

But in China, the joy of having a connected high can quickly be replaced by ‘cold turkey’ guilt.

“A total of 84.9% of people in a survey said their obsession with smartphones had made them spend less time communicating with their families and 78.9% said they felt guilty for doing so,” a poll released by the influential state-run China Youth Daily confirmed.

“This feeling appeared to be even stronger among people in their 30s – the ‘1980s-generation’ – as 91.4% of them complained about the ‘phubbing impact,’ [the habit of snubbing someone in favor of a mobile phone,]” the report revealed last year.

Smartphone culture

The rise of smartphone culture in the world’s second-largest economy has been phenomenal in the past decade with China now the largest market on the planet.

Data from Statista underlined the scale and scope of the online craze. More than 25% of worldwide smartphone sales are generated in the country.

“Around 713 million people in China used a smartphone in 2018,” the data website stated and the figure is still rising